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Editor’s Note: Originally published in December, 2016.
I’m still amazed whenever I see the bumper sticker that reads, “Visualize world peace.” The idea is that if I, and enough other people, create the right mental picture of peace, it will soon come to pass. It’s astounding that...
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Martin Luther struggled greatly with the relationship of God’s sovereignty to human free will and sin. In fact, one of the greatest books ever written on the subject, TheBondage of the Will, is from Luther’s pen. When Luther grappled with this issue, he especially struggled with the Old Testament passages where we read that God hardened Pharaoh’s heart.
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The essential content of Christian preaching, Paul says, is the mystery of the gospel. He writes that the preaching of the Word of God is seen in "the mystery which has been hidden from the past ages and generations, but has now been manifested to His saints" (Col. 1:26). A mystery?
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More than forty years ago, Los Angeles experienced a terrible earthquake, one of the worst in the city’s history. I remember the event because just before the earthquake, I had driven a friend of mine to the airport so that he could catch a flight to Los Angeles, where he was a pastor. The earthquake affected his church, and he later told me that at first everything seemed to be fine with the sanctuary building.
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Psalm 92 is titled “A Psalm. A Song for the Sabbath.” The Sabbath was a central institution in the Old Testament. God had strictly charged Israel to keep the Sabbath day holy. God declared that He had grounded the sanctity of the Sabbath in His creation (Gen. 2:3; Ex. 20:8–11) and in His redemptive work (Deut. 5:12–15). When the prophets warned Israel about her sins, desecration of the Sabbath was listed as a very serious issue (see, for example, Isa. 56; 58). Because of the importance of the Sabbath for Israel, it is surprising that this psalm is the only one in the Psalter that refers to that holy day. Even more surprising, perhaps, is the apparent absence of any clear reference to the Sabbath in the body of the psalm.
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